I know there are a lot of these threads, but I'd really appreciate any thoughts or words of wisdom on the following existential musings on which MacBook to buy. I had mostly decided but since the WWDC keynote I'm having doubts again. I'm leaving the real world this summer to go back to (grad) school, necessitating a laptop purchase, but I'm a couple years out of touch with both the MacBook lineup and student habits.
Most important is which machine, if any, will be competent to run statistical software packages (Stata etc) with large datasets, which I expect to be doing somewhere between occasionally and regularly. The rest of the time I'll just be doing LaTeX and web browsing, which of course anything can do. I also want a machine that will be functional and reliable for some years to come.
Moderately important are weight and, to a lesser extent, battery life. I do like to work in libraries and coffee shops and would prefer to haul the computer around with me most of the time.
I do not care in the slightest about hard drive size, optical drive, graphics, or display.
If a cMBP will be substantially better at running statistical software then that's obviously what I should get, even though it's a bit maddening to buy something right before I expect it to be discontinued. The education pricing on it is great and though it's the heaviest of the 13" Apple notebooks it does still weigh less than either of my previous two laptops. But if the MBP will still struggle (OR not be a huge improvement over the Air's capability, but I am operating under the assumption that the Air will be mostly useless for Stata) and I'm going to end up tied to the university computer lab for running my analyses anyway then I may as well get an Air.
Or should I bite the bullet and shell out a few hundred dollars extra for the rMBP even though I don't actually care about the retina display? Is the SSD really worth the extra cash? It also seems more future-proof than the cMBP. Ultimately I have the money, I'm just not sure the rMBP would be the best use of it.
Most important is which machine, if any, will be competent to run statistical software packages (Stata etc) with large datasets, which I expect to be doing somewhere between occasionally and regularly. The rest of the time I'll just be doing LaTeX and web browsing, which of course anything can do. I also want a machine that will be functional and reliable for some years to come.
Moderately important are weight and, to a lesser extent, battery life. I do like to work in libraries and coffee shops and would prefer to haul the computer around with me most of the time.
I do not care in the slightest about hard drive size, optical drive, graphics, or display.
If a cMBP will be substantially better at running statistical software then that's obviously what I should get, even though it's a bit maddening to buy something right before I expect it to be discontinued. The education pricing on it is great and though it's the heaviest of the 13" Apple notebooks it does still weigh less than either of my previous two laptops. But if the MBP will still struggle (OR not be a huge improvement over the Air's capability, but I am operating under the assumption that the Air will be mostly useless for Stata) and I'm going to end up tied to the university computer lab for running my analyses anyway then I may as well get an Air.
Or should I bite the bullet and shell out a few hundred dollars extra for the rMBP even though I don't actually care about the retina display? Is the SSD really worth the extra cash? It also seems more future-proof than the cMBP. Ultimately I have the money, I'm just not sure the rMBP would be the best use of it.